Review: ‘Figuring’ illuminates the private lives of female innovators

On the first night of October in 1847, 29-year-old Maria Mitchell, wearing a plain Quaker gown, stepped away from a dinner party and onto the rooftop of her family home. Gazing through her telescope, she discovered a fantastic comet that would soon be named after her.

Within months, she would become the first woman admitted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, later, a professor at Vassar College; building a life that was, at the time, unthinkable for a woman. After her discovery, luminaries like Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville would travel to her home to look through her telescope’s lens. Decades later, another young girl would read a biography about Mitchell’s life and realize that she, too, could become a scientist. That girl, astronomer Vera Rubin, would confirm the existence of dark matter.

These historical figures and more come to life in “Figuring,” the debut essay collection by Maria Popova. Published earlier this year, the book connects and humanizes notable innovators, many of whom were female and queer. The lineup includes astronomer Mitchell, sculptor Harriet Hosmer, transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, poet Emily Dickinson, mathematician Johannes Kepler and marine biologist Rachel Carson. Secondary characters Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass are never too far away. With a blend of chance, personal bravery and ferocious work ethic, we see each figure carving a path that ultimately moves humanity forward.

Popova has long been in the business of illuminating lives well lived. She’s the founder of Brain Pickings, a blog focused on finding meaning through profiles in literature, science, art and philosophy. In “Figuring,” her ability to breathe life into her subjects is in full effect, as she eagerly shows us what her subjects wore (like that Quaker gown), the journeys on horseback they took to get their work published, the illnesses and headaches they endured, the relatives they fought with, the beds they slept in, and the poems they loved.

From the first sentence, it’s clear that Popova delights in the details:

“All of it — the rings of Saturn and my father’s wedding band, the underbelly of the clouds pinked by the rising sun, Einstein’s brain bathing in a jar of formaldehyde, every grain of sand that made the glass that made the jar and each idea Einstein ever had, the shepherdess singing in the Rila mountains of my native Bulgaria and each one of her sheep, every hair on Chance’s velveteen dog ears and Marianne Moore’s red braid and the whiskers of Montaigne’s cat, every translucent fingernail on my friend Amanda’s newborn son, every stone with which Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets before wading into the River Ouse to drown … the Dipper of freckles constellating the olive firmament of a certain forearm I love and every axonal flutter of the tenderness with which I love her, all the facts and figments by which we are perpetually figuring and reconfiguring reality …”

With such poetic language, Popova seamlessly links and leaps between the worlds of science and art. In “Figuring” poetry is far from the periphery. More than just out of respect for lineage (i.e. we could not have had Emily Dickinson without Elizabeth Barrett Browning), verse is an essential tool that the author and the figures turn to. Even the scientists are anchored by poetic language — the precision, music and grace, infinity of it — as they question and search.

We also get to see their love letters, which are terrifically cringe-worthy. Unlike traditional history books, Popova shows her characters fumbling in their personal lives. When it comes to love, they are misinterpreting romantic cues, coming on too strong and pleading for unrequited lovers to write them back. Among these are Margaret Fuller, who pens long letters to Ralph Waldo Emerson after their walks in the woods, and Emily Dickinson, who proclaims to her sister-in-law (whom she’s in love with), “We are the only poets, and everyone else is prose.”

The book is unquestionably feminist. At a time when these roles simply didn’t exist, we see women finding ways forward. This includes the magnificent Rachel Carson laying the foundation for the modern environmental movement, even as she’s dying from cancer. Meanwhile, Margaret Fuller is jumping into coal mines to report on the condition of workers, and launching the most innovative literary journal of the time. Both women’s actions thrillingly cause the public consciousness to shift.

The characters share a general feeling of mutual advancement. They lift each other up and see their progress as linked. It’s no coincidence that Popova shares and models this trait. In an era of online clickbait and skim reading, her work invites us to be inspired by each other, to elevate our intellect and question the status quo. She believes that “there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives” and proves it time and again. In swirling, poetic sentences, she dares readers to engage with her characters and their stories differently, with depth and effort. This, like the figures we follow, feels revolutionary.

“Figuring”

By Maria Popova

Pantheon Books

$30, 578 pages

Emily Sernaker

Emily Sernaker
Emily Sernaker has written for the Los Angeles Times, McSweeney's and the Rumpus. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com